Amarillo Bay ContentsVolume 6 Number 1

Current Issue

We are pleased to present the first issue of our sixth year, published on Monday, 2 February 2004. We hope you enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! (See the Previous Issues list to discover the works in our collection, including the ability to search through the issues.)

Fiction

Hidden Pieces
by Courtney Mauk
From Devon's window, I could see everything, even the sun-burnt spot on the top of her father's head. He stood in the driveway, shoulders hunched, peeling back the deer's skin with the beautiful precision of an accomplished sculptor. Blood trickled and formed small pools by the edge of the road, and the knife blade glistened in the late afternoon sun. His actions fascinated me; these activities would never occur at my house, where my father slouched on the sofa and read business magazines and my mother collected antique vases and teapots shaped like cats.

An Ill Wind
by Nora Holder
John Tensing was unaware just how bad this afternoon was going to get. His wife, doing up his tie, knew nothing. He'd made the appointment with the bank himself--determined to get in there first, have a chat--sort it all out. God knew it hadn't been through lack of hard work that he'd ended up in this mess. He'd just tried a bit too hard to make things that little bit better for them all. As he combed the thin hair over his encroaching bald spot and heard the children squabbling about the toothpaste, he didn't have an inkling of what was going to occur. How could he?

Love Triangle
by Robert Pesa
True to published claim, the object in my rearview was indeed closer than it appeared. In this case said object was a green station wagon, which had appeared in my rearview at the last second, parked across my driveway as I backed out of the garage. I was left with only a fraction of a second to react, or maybe two fractions: one to stomp the brake, the other to contemplate why the green station wagons of the world only parked across your driveway when you were late for work.

Creative Nonfiction

Hydrogen Bomb Days
by James Ward Lee
If Attorney General John Ashcraft reads this, as I am sure he will, I may find myself incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Worth, Texas, keeping company with ex-governor Edwin Edwards of Louisiana. That is, if I am lucky. If I am unlucky, I may serve my time at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Naval Brig. Since the offence I am about to confess took place in the United States Navy, I am not sure whether I will be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, sometimes called "the Rocks and Shoals," or just in a federal courthouse under the United States Criminal Code. What I am confessing is probably a serious federal crime. I am sure I have betrayed military secrets in talking about "the Hydrogen Bomb." About fifty years ago, I signed a paper saying I would never talk or write or otherwise communicate with anyone about my Atomic Bomb and Hydrogen Bomb experiences. Now I am about to tell all.

Learning Rules About Courtship: What's Wrong With Me
by Jim Sanderson
In conversations with certain women, when I, a middle-aged man, mention that I'm not married, that I've never been married, I get a look that asks, "What's wrong with you?"
Women often answer the unspoken question, proclaiming that I lack commitment. To that answer, though, I have two responses. First, I've been committed to being a mediocre writer for twenty-five years. Second, in the last twenty years, I have more often been the dumpee as opposed to the dumper. I had a bunch of Mrs. Rights, but my Mrs. Rights were usually getting rid of their old Mr. Right, and I was the means to finding a new one. So in a way I was committed to helping marriage, just not my own.

Poetry

After All
by Farida Mihoub
When he asked me how things were,
I said that perhaps a beating heart
was enough good news.

Changes
by Cathy-Ann
turning the crackling leaf
over and over,
no phylum depicted with
the autumn chill.

Results
by Cathy-Ann
acres of cotton spreading unbalanced
against the winter draught; fallow grounds
covered with sage brush and cockleburs:

A Meditation on Ecclesiastes
by Steven Schroeder
These days, terror
is color-coded, and the air
in this terminal is orange after
the hundredth repetition

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